Kevin Myers Blinded me with Pseudoscience

Kevin Myers is a noted irritating writer for the Irish Independent, which is a newspaper confused as to whether it's a tabloid or broadsheet, and a very unpleasant. However, until today I hadn't realised he was entirely stupid.

Here's his article for yesterday. It refers to the recent scandal where the Minister of State for Science was going to launch an anti-evolution book; the minister ultimately withdrew, presumably after he realised just how much it would make him look like an idiot. Kev's article on the subject is, well, to put it mildly, interesting. It's titled Evolutionism is just another belief system -- but one that depends on a great deal of science. It first attempts to define 'evolutionism' (a word typically used by creationists and others to denote a person who accepts the theory of evolution through natural selection) as a religion:

Evolutionism is proof of the power of evolution, for it has itself evolved into a religion, with Richard Dawkins its St Paul and St Peter, its proselytiser and pope.

This strikes me as very peculiar; how, precisely? And why Dawkins of all people?

Like any worthwhile religion, it treats non-believers as backward and uneducated.

Well, Mr Myers, not to put it too finely, that is because they are.

Now, that stuff alone is pretty silly; are people who accept, say, Newtonian gravitation as a reasonable model for everyday circumstances gravitationists, who worship at the alter of Stephen Hawking? Are people who accept that 1 + 1 = 2 depraved mathsists, who go down to the university every Sunday for readings from the sacred Principia Mathematica? The whole basis of religious faith is that it it faith; something accepted without evidence. Oh, but it doesn't stop there.

Theories of evolution when tested on the origin of protein molecules, not to speak of DNA, usually imitate Mr Gladstone when replying to Queen Victoria's question: "Yes, prime minister, but what is it exactly that lesbians do in bed?"

Evolution cannot explain the most basic question about how a simple protein like insulin could have first been formed. "Simple" is a relative term: insulin is composed of 51 amino acids and has a molecular weight of 5808. Water is just 18. You can boil the primeval molecular broth for an awful long time and put it under enormous pressures, but you will not spontaneously create an insulin molecule

Now, what he's really asking, even if he doesn't know it, and apparently he doesn't, is how did life originate? The origin of life is called abiogenesis, and while there are many theories, some quite advanced and with evidence behind them, there is no standard model, as there is for, say, evolution.

Now, nobody suggests, nobody, that the insulin molecule popped into existence by chance in the 'primordial soup'. Most theories of abiogenesis involve the chance creation of a self-replicating, data-carrying molecule, and go from there. It's quite detailed, and you can read about it here and elsewhere, but it's by no means some fanciful idea, and there is a lot of science behind it.

The very idea that insulin turned up randomly in a primordial soup is very odd. Even modern 'primitive' organisms such as bacteria do not have or produce insulin; the e coli that produces insulin for medical purposes was made by inserting human DNA for making insulin into the bacterium. And no doubt it evolved like any other substance that an organism produces; through selection of DNA mutations, and in fact the evolution of insulin production genes has been much-studied. Myers appears to believe that it must first have shown up spontaneously through non-biological action, which is simply bizarre.

I can't help suspecting, actually, that Myers has been mislead by the claims of creationists; a popular creationist talking point is that "something couldn't happen purely by chance which no scientist claimed happened by chance". His case seems to be that insulin couldn't have evolved, because it is highly improbable that it would have shown up all on its own, by random chance. Which is all very nice, but nobody suggested it did that. While some chance is required in the very early stages of abiogenesis, the mechanisms to make insulin evolved, normally, and evolution through natural selection is not chance; while it relies on random mutations, it tends to select against those which are harmful, or even, generally, neutral. The strangest thing here is that it's asking entirely the wrong question; even assuming the whole thing was chance, the chance of insulin showing up all on its own surely has nothing to do with organisms gaining the ability to manufacture it. Perhaps he thinks it's a necessary prerequisite to life or something?

Saying that such immensely complex, artfully constructed creations were the result of accidents is like putting 140 pounds of mince into a huge mixer, churning them around for a million years and expecting Einstein to result.

Okay, Kev, but who said that? No-one on the science side, certainly. It's a popular creationist strawman, essentially a rehash of "a cat can't change into a tree by chance" but concerning biochemistry to make it less obviously stupid at first glance.

Evolutionism is now basically just another belief system, but one that depends on a great deal of science; and where science doesn't supply the answers, it launches itself into a mass of abstractions and elaborate essays in Yetology, as in: "Science has not YET explained the emergence of the first peptides, however . . ."

And I'm not sure that anyone has said that, either. Here is an article on the alleged irreducible complexity of these things. The bit about the first peptides is, again, strawman weirdness; how on earth are we to know what the first peptides were? And really, does a scientist saying "we don't know, yet" make something a religion? When a mathematician says "we don't know, yet" if all prime numbers are whatever, does that make maths a religion? Now, if someone were to demonstrate that it were impossible  or very unlikely for abiogenesis to lead, eventually, to insulin, that would be a big blow for evolution, certainly, but Myers ridiculous strawman simply doesn't qualify.

Moreover, the best way to attract incredulous guffaws amongst "intelligent" westerners is to declare that the concept of intelligent design has some merit.

That's because intelligent design is a cynical ploy to disguise creationism as science to fool the gullible.

THE real paradox in the western world is that evolutionism now co-exists with theism. Most Darwinians believe in a god and most religious people accept Darwin.

Hardly a paradox. We have, remember, observed evolution in action. Religious people may have different views on how their god comes into it, if at all; for instance some may claim that their god set up the prerequisite state of a universe suitable to life (which is a problem in physics and cosmology; there are alternative scientific theories) or that it created the first terribly primitive life (thus ignoring the question of abiogenesis). Myers seems to have come to believe (incorrectly) that evolution through natural selection is in itself supposed to explain where life comes from; in fact it explains how life evolves, with the origins of life and a universe suitable to it being delegated elsewhere.

We certainly don't accept an allegedly all-encompassing theory about the origins of species that cannot even begin to explain how the bricks and mortar of life came into being.

Again, Kevin, who the hell is doing this alleging? No-one on the science side, again; the origins of life are a separate issue. And evolutionary scientists have explained and continue to explain how many of the 'bricks and mortar of life' came into being; are we to refuse to accept it until it has covered every damn protein and sugar and other biochemical in existence?

What this article really does, though, is show that he has no idea what he's talking about. It's not just that spontaneous generation of insulin is silly, it's that even if it were totally practical, it would still be no use to anyone; organisms which need insulin need the machinery to produce it, not have it arise from a primordial soup in the vicinity. It is the wrong question.

If I were the person who'd produced this rubbish, I'd be embarrassed. He should really, perhaps, have had a quick read before he started, perhaps even perusing some of the tomes of the Dread Lord Dawkins; there is no shortage of coverage suitable for the layman.

For much more on the topic, see this handy index of silly creationist claims.